


Pie Day

by forgotten_silence



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: AU, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 16:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13815459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgotten_silence/pseuds/forgotten_silence
Summary: Because turning up at your neighbour’s apartment with pie at two a.m is a perfectly reasonable thing to do [Touken/ AU].





	Pie Day

**A/N: Took me long enough to write this one. Sorry for the delay! Thank you for the prompt and hope you like it! <3 I originally wrote it with Kaneki but realized the personality in this goes with Haise much, much better, so I changed the name to Haise. I hope that’s okay.**

 

* * *

 

## Pie Day

When she sees him standing in front of her door with that stupid, plastic smile on his face, and a damn plate with a- with a- was that a  _pie?-_  she  _knows._ She’d seen him- caught him, more like, when she’d chanced a glance at her window.

Which part, exactly, had escaped him? Was it the part where she’d glared at him? Had the glass between them dulled the glare? She didn’t think so. Or did he take her pulling the curtains close as an invitation?

Great. Now he is ringing the bell.  _The bell._ As if his knocks going unanswered isn’t answer enough.

No.

Clearly, when you spy on your neighbour and happen to catch her crying, you came over and knocked incessantly at the door.  _Clearly._

Well, she’d had enough. Enough of catching him always staring at her through the window, _enough_ of nodding her head in acknowledgement when she had the misfortune to meet him in the hallway or the elevator.  _Enough_ of this knocking on the door and bell-ringing. She is going to snatch that perfectly baked fucking pie and smash it onto his pleasant little face.

She marches to the door and wrenches it open. _“Yes?”_

He cowers under her glare, and holds up the pie, which, she realizes, is a chocolate pie. “I thought I’d come and introduce myself. We’ve lived here for ages and isn’t it funny?” He gives a nervous little laugh, “And we don’t even know each other’s names.”

She can only stare at him incredulously.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in? I brought pie.” Now would be the time to take that fucking pie and smash it into his face. Except she doesn’t.

Except, this is all so very weird that all she finds herself saying is, “ _Now?_ ”

“Yeah,” he says, as if turning up at your neighbour’s apartment with pie at two a.m is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

‘Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s, uh,” he glances at his wrist-watch, “ A quarter past two.”

“Yeah, it is,” Touka snaps, “And has it occurred to you that it is not polite to knock on a stranger’s door at this time in the morning?”

“But you are not a stranger,” he actually sounds puzzled.

Touka stares.

“We see each other all the time.”

“You _just_ said you came over to introduce yourself.”

“Yea, well,” he shrugs, “And I brought pie.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“Because it’s a delicious pie,” he said, “And you like pie.”

“How do you know I like pie?” she narrows her eyes.

“I’ve seen you glare at me. You’re always glaring at me. But you look so angry when you see me eat pie,” he smiles again. Why is he always smiling? She wants to punch him in the face.

“I don’t glare at you,” Touka says, glaring at him.

“Yes you do.”

“No, I don’t.” Maybe she did. “Well, maybe I do. But because you are so annoying with your loud music and who the fuck bakes pie in the middle of the night?” she throws up her hands, “I can’t even keep my curtains open because of you. Because you’re  _always_  there!”

“I can’t help it if my apartment is next to yours,” he gives a helpless shrug.

Touka rolls her eyes.

“Go away,” she tells him.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“ _No.”_

 _“_ I brought pie.”

“I don’t  _want_  pie.”

“But you like pie.”

What happens next really is not her fault. She doesn’t really think it out, not really, but there is only so much a person can handle, especially at two in the morning after a very upsetting day. So she grabs the pie from his hands, and with all the force she can muster, slam into his face.

Except that, instead of harmlessly spattering his face with pie, there is a sickeing crunch and a muffled cry of pain. He staggers back on impact and lands on his bum, and she can see a trickle of red sliding down his jaw that is clearly not pie.

“Oh.”

The pie tray clatters on to the floor, and although she cannot see most of his face, there  _is_  blood trailing down his neck, and his hands are over where is nose should be, except it is covered in chocolate and pie-crust and- and oozing what looks like blood.

“Are you- are you okay?”  _Oh god. What have I done?_

“Geb be Dappids.” His voice sounds weird. Distorted.

“What?” Touka isn’t sure what he is saying. 

He makes a wild gesture with his hands, and then she understands. She runs into her apartment and grabs a box of tissues. He dabs the worst of the pie filling off his face, she can see that his nose is bent at an odd angle.

“I’m sorry,” Touka says. Her hands are shaking, and she feels so, so bad. “I’m so, so sorry.” She hands him another wad of tissue to press against his bleeding nose. “You can use my bathroom and get cleaned up. I’ll call an uber. We’ll go to the hospital, and I’ll pay your hospital bills. I’m really sorry. I didn’t think-”

“Daz obey,” he waves his hand in a reassuring manner, but all Touka can think is how she has assaulted someone  _again._ She should have just thanked him and taken the damn pie.

In the end, it turns out he is very adept at dealing with broken noses. He borrows ice from her freezer and later, fashions a splint from a piece of plastic which he carves into shape with a knife, and sticks onto his nose with scotch tape. By now, his bruises are standing out in angry blacks and blues and purples. There is a shallow cut across his jaw, mirroring the line of the tin tray.

All in all, it makes Touka feel very bad about it all. She cleans up the hallway and washes the empty pie tray, and then offers him mint ice-cream, which is the only thing she has in the fridge. She feels even worse when he shakes his head no, points to his own apartment, and walks out. After he’s gone, she peeks out through the curtains, watching as his living room light switches on and he walks in, until it switches off again as he walks into his bedroom.

The next day finds her peering through her curtains again every few minutes, only to see him sprawled out on his couch. She makes him a sandwich, peers through the curtains again, and promptly decides against it. In the afternoon, she makes him coffee again, and drinks it. By dinner time, she thinks she has finally mustered up the courage to carry the plate she’d prepared (sandwiches again), and properly apologize. She looks through the window again, to check if he is up and at home, and stops.

And stares.

Standing across from him, talking animatedly, is a woman Touka has never seen before. He’s sitting up now, and she can’t see his face because he is looking down at something. The woman moves around the room, still talking, her long, purple hair flowing behind her.

How come Touka had never seen her before? He’d done pretty well for himself, hadn’t he? The woman looks ridiculously pretty. All the better then. Touka wouldn’t need to be responsible for taking care of him now. All she had to do would be go over, apologize and explain to the woman why her boyfriend’s nose is broken. Easy. Doable. Not a terrifying prospect at all.

Suddenly, the woman turns to the window and points straight at her. Touka scuttles back and quickly adjusts the curtains back into place, but not before she catches the both of them looking at her.

 _Whelp._ She just couldn’t seem to stop embarrassing herself, could she?

_Should have just taken the damn pie._

Like the coward she is, Touka waits until the woman leaves. In fact, she waits several days just to make sure the woman is truly gone before she makes another attempt at apologizing. She must have waited many several days because when he opens the door, she is greeted with a smooth face with clear skin and no evident bruising. His nose splint is gone and it looks perfectly well aligned.

She stares.

“Hello,” he says pleasantly. 

“Hi,” she forces herself to smile. It feels unnatural to smile at someone you are so used to frowning at. “Your face looks nice.” She wants to punch herself in the face the moment the words are out of her mouth. 

“Thank you,” he says, looking way more amused than he has any right to.

“It looks healed,” she says, feeling the need to elaborate, “your nose doesn’t look broken anymore. And the-” she gestures to her face- “are gone.”

“Yeah,” he says, still looking amused, “it’s been almost three weeks since you hit me in the face.”

Touka feels her face burn. He just  _had_ to bring it up, didn’t he? No subtly at all, had he?

“I’m sorry,” she mutters. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he waves his hand. “Would you like to come in?”

“Yeah,” says Touka, “yeah, sure.” 

His apartment is much bigger than hers, and looks, for the most part, more expensively decorated. There are more potted plants than her window would suggest, and all of the furniture she can see matches; all sleek black marble and glass table tops and little hints of colour. Except, she isn’t sure she finds the paintings on the wall tasteful at all. She can’t pin-point exactly what she finds unsettling about the pictures, but it is there. Perhaps it is that they are all of weird giant insect-like things, or maybe it is the colours that are used.

It suddenly dawns on her that she doesn’t even know his name. That he could as likely as not be a serial killer. And hadn’t she just given him reason to kill her by breaking his nose? Where was his girlfriend anyway? Touka hadn’t seen her since that one day either.

“Would you like some dinner?” his voice makes her jump. 

“N-no,” she stammers, and then immediately says, “Yes, thank you.” She’d already worse than offended him by refusing his home baked pie, and  _then_ breaking his nose with it. 

He moves to the kitchen where there is a pot of steaming.. something, which she realizes is pasta when he ladles it onto two plates. Sauce from another pot follows, finished off by freshly expertly grated cheese(how can someone look so professional while grating cheese?) and two springs of mint cut off from one of the plants on the kitchen island. Because, of course, he had to have fresh herbs lying around. Touka resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but didn’t quite succeed. 

The pasta is the best home-cooked pasta she’d ever had. Judging by the taste and the finesse with which she’d seen him handle everything in the kitchen, he was a terribly good cook.  _Perhaps a chef, then, and not a serial killer,_ she thinks as she tucks into her lunch.

“What’s your name?” he asks conversationally, sitting on the chair adjacent to her. “I still don’t know your name. I’m Haise, by the way.”

“Touka,” she says around a mouthful of noodles. Then, after a pause, adds, “I’m really sorry about what happened. Thank you for not pressing charges.”

Haise laughs. “Don’t worry about it, Touka-chan.”

“Thanks,” she mutters, not looking at him.

“You’ll make it up to me if you come to the annual dinner night at my office,” he offers with a smile.

“What?” 

“Would you like to go to a dinner at my office, to make it up to me?” he repeats. She decides she doesn’t like the teasing smile on his face.

“Not really,” she says.

“Perhaps lunch, then?”

“Don’t you have someone to take to these things already?” she asks before she can help it.

“Not really,” he shrugs, “I could ask my ex-wife, but she’d probably throw more demands in my face. She’s already getting more than half of my money.”

“Ex-wife?”  _What?  
_

“The one you were staring at a few weeks ago, remember?”

“Oh,” is the only intelligent thing she could manage.

“So?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you go with me?” he grins at her. It is incredible how well his face had healed.

“I already have a boyfriend,” Touka lies, although she doesn’t know why. 

“You can go as my friend,” he says, still grinning, like he knows she is lying.

“Fine.”

“It’s a date, then.”

“It’s  _not_  a date.”


End file.
